Excerpts of address by Ricardo Azan to meeting of investors on January 10, 2008

In June and July some bad deals went down. We tried to recover the loss by overleveraging the accounts, we subsequently had more loss.

Whatever fresh money came in we tried to salvage it, and I made pride - because I have never owed anybody - overshadow common sense (and) intelligence to say to everybody this is where we (are) at, this is what has happened.

Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot correct what has gone wrong in terms of mismanaging but I can certainly apologise …

I don't need to tell all of you that subsequently, coming into November, the bank that Money Express banks with was a double calamity. Without any notice at all, the bank went into receivership (bankrupt) ...

What I have now done is put together a group, a highly reputable group of bankers, lawyers, financial people, who is the task force that will advise me on the best way forward. We will be looking at how to settle the principle in the shortest possible time, for everybody. I must say that no interest will be paid for December, January and February.

The task force has asked me for one month, one month from today (Thursday), to analyse the situation and present their findings and solutions. At the end of one month, I will be calling another meeting so that everybody will be advised what is the way forward.

I don't think those of you who know me have ever known me to steal any of your money. I have been in banking for 25 years, I have never taken a dollar from anybody. Yes, I have mismanaged the funds, because pride got in the way.

In 1992, the Bank of Jamaica took me down for a couple million U.S. dollars. I fought that and beat it.